FOREST AND STREAM 
445 
Another For “Old Camper” 
With a few Observations, Philosophical and Philological, thrown in 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have been very much interested in reading 
the answers to the problem of “Old Camper’’ that 
are appearing in your paper from week to week, 
and while I do not feel it necessary to add any¬ 
thing to the really good advice which has been 
tendered him, I have been struck with the fact 
that those who submitted cooking recipes for his 
guidance seem to fight altogether shy of pork. 
Now, while the average human being may not 
crave strong meat in the city, pork is one of the 
things that keeps him going in the woods. It need 
not be served in the messy, disagreeable style 
often adopted by guides, for there are numerous 
ways in which it can be made an attractive part 
of the menu. Said an old timber cruiser to me 
one day—he had been off his feed for some un¬ 
known reason for several days—“You may as 
well fry her, for no matter what you do, even to 
dressing her up and adding perfumery, she is only 
pork after all.” But what says Winthrop, that 
strange genius who wrote the most fascinating 
story of adventure across the mountains of the 
Pacific so many years ago, his book being to the 
land wayfarer what Dana’s “Two Years Before 
the Mast” is to the lover of the sea. Winthrop's 
apostrophe follows: 
“0 Pork! what a creature thou art!” contin¬ 
ued I, in monologue, cutting neat slices of that 
viand with my bowie-knife, and laying them fra¬ 
ternally, three in a bed, in the frying pan. 
“Blessed be Moses! who forbade thee, whereby 
we, of freer dispensations, heirs of all the ages, 
inherit also pigs more numerous and bacon 
cheaper. 
“0 Pork! what could campaigners do without 
thy fatness, thy leanness, thy portableness?’ 
Here Loolowcan presented me the three birds 
plucked featherless as Plato’s man. The two 
roasters we planted carefully on spits before a 
sultry spot of the fire. From a horizontal stick, 
supported on forked stakes, we suspended by a 
twig over each roaster an automatic baster, an 
inverted cone of pork, ordained to yield its 
spicy juices to the wooing flame, and drip be¬ 
dewing on each bosom beneath. The roasters 
ripened deliberately, while keen and quick fire 
told upon the fryer, the first course of our feast. 
Meanwhile I brewed a pot of tea, blessing Con¬ 
fucius for that restorative weed, as I had blessed 
Moses for his abstinence from porkers. Need 
I say that the grouse were admirable, that every¬ 
thing was delicious, and the Confucian weed first 
chop?” 
The love of Indians for pork is well known to 
everybody who has come in contact with them. 
As an old Ojibway, who was paddling the writer 
in northern Canada, remarked one night, koo- 
kosh nish-ish-shin, which, translated literally into 
English, stands for “pork is bully.” The Ojibway 
knew what kept him going, for it is a fact that 
your northern Indian becomes a better man when 
he is fed on the white man’s rations—barring 
whiskey. 
Martin Hunter, an old Hudson Bay factor, and 
a former contributor to these columns, put the 
case exactly when he wrote: “Who ever heard 
of a rabbit and fish-eating Indian going to war?” 
Not only does the Canadian Indian like pork; 
he loves everything else with grease in it. One 
summer, while I was in the woods, an Indian at¬ 
tempted to teach me the language. I will not say 
that he succeeded very well, for most of the vocab¬ 
ulary has been forgotten, but I cannot forget the 
wonderfuly clever verbal structures which that 
Indian succeeded in building up into polysyllabic 
Ojibway form. One of his most artistic crea¬ 
tions was the word he used in describing butter, 
which, as I recall it, meant something represent¬ 
ing the final extract or exquisitiveness of the 
cream—of the cream—of the white man's tame 
moose, or something to that effect. At any rate, 
it took about that long to say the word, and when 
One of the Things That Keep Us Going. 
I succeeded in mastering it, the butter usually 
had spoiled before the word was finished, or the 
Indian had eaten up most of it. 
We must remember, however, that the early 
Indian was hard put in making his language 
cover all the things and conditions introduced by 
the white man. He could not fall back on the 
classic Greek, that exquisite lingual instrument, or 
its later child, the Latin, and he could not do 
even what one of Mark Twain's German charac¬ 
ters accomplished, when he “dove through an 
Atlantic of words and came up on the other 
side with a verb in his mouth.” 
But to return to the food question. It is some¬ 
what risky for the city man going into the woods 
to indulge more than sparingly in pork. For 
that matter, it is quite as dangerous to eat too 
much meat of any kind. Much better is it to 
restrain the appetite for a few days, for while 
your shanty man can eat enormous quantities, he 
also does a lot of work that you will never be 
called upon to perform. I used to watch the 
chore boys in Quebec lumber camps fishing out 
huge chunks of pork from the barrel, whacking 
them up into thick pieces, which the cook pro¬ 
ceeded to drown in boiling fat, and which dis¬ 
appeared, solid substance and liquid fat as well, 
at an amazing rate down the throats of the husky 
lumber jacks. 
When I was younger I was wont to debate 
with myself the question whether it was neces¬ 
sary for the lumber cruisers to eat so much, be¬ 
cause they worked so hard; but I have more 
lately concluded that they have to work, willy- 
nilly, to overcome the effects of the enormous 
quantities of food they eat. At any rate, the 
lumber companies get the work done, even though 
the expenditure for food fuel is enormous. 
But I have wandered far enough along without 
touching the subject I started to write about, and 
it is too late now to begin. “Old Camper” evi¬ 
dently knew his business or he would not have 
begun boasting to you about his unexpected call¬ 
ers. It is quite certain that when he served them 
their needed supper they would not have to ex¬ 
claim, in the words of Petruchio, 
Where is the rascal cook? 
How durst you, villain, bring it from the 
dresser, 
And serve it thus to me that love it not? 
On the contrary, we ean all imagine that when 
the guests got up from the outdoor table they 
might have said, using the language of honest 
old Isaak Walton, that they had enjoyed dishes 
“too good for any but anglers, or very honest 
men.” H. 
MORE HELP FOR OLD CAMPER. 
Huntsville, Ala., Feb. 18, 1914. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I give the old Camper the helping hand, as far 
as I can, for the fix he is in. I don’t know 
whether it will help him much. Now, in the first 
place, I want a good fire. Now for a quick meal. 
I would make a stew with the partridges, and 
I had better cut them up a little so they will cook 
quickly. I would make good biscuit. I would 
then take a piece of the biscuit dough, break it 
in small pieces, drop in with the partridges, and 
salt and pepper to taste. I would take part of 
the trout, boil them long enough for the meat to 
leave the bones, then mix with the mashed pota¬ 
toes and season the same to taste. Make in cakes 
and fry in hot lard. 
Then peel six or eight good sized potatoes, cut 
in halves or quarters, and boil until tender. Cut 
some nice slices of bacon and fry to a light brown. 
Now brown your potatoes after the meat. Take 
the same quantity of potatoes, wash and bake in 
hot ashes with jackets on. Now take the bal¬ 
ance of fish, salt, roll in corn meal and fry in hot 
lard until nicely browned. Make tea or coffee, 
or both. Your dinner is now ready. Ring the 
bell. E. TRUMP. 
P. S.—I would have cooked the partridges dif¬ 
ferently if I had had the time. 
A hatchery in the Long Lake region, Illinois, 
will probably be established in the near future, 
three possible sites in that locality now being 
under consideration. There is a state appropria¬ 
tion of $15,000 for the new hatchery. 
